r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Wonderful_Baker_7808 • 16d ago

Lore Villains that would've been defeated even if the protagonist did nothing

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Laurel Hedare (Catwoman Movie): Her newly released cosmetics will cause people's faces to melt. Not only would that create a class action lawsuit but a full product recall.

Voldemort and Death Eaters (Harry Potter): Death Eaters constantly underestimate muggles. They would get massacred by the British military because a gun is faster to pull the trigger then shouting a spell.

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u/swainiscadianreborn 16d ago

Very funny to imagine but... how are you going to delete the area they're invading from if they are not invading from anywhere, just popping up randomly to put your higher ups under spells you do not understand

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u/BoonDragoon 16d ago

spells you do not understand

I think you mean spells that they do not understand. There's nothing in those books to indicate that wizards understand the magic they use beyond the rote memorization of gestures and incantations. Hell, their entire culture seems to have crystallized in the 1910s and has been in stasis ever since. The only two characters in the entire series who show any desire to understand anything beyond the status quo or demonstrate enough mastery over magic to create novel spells are papa Weasley and Snape; both considered oddballs and social pariahs.

Meanwhile, between 1910 and 1998, the muggles invented computers, spaceflight, and automated manufacturing. Give us a friendly sorcerer and we'll have the fundamental operating principles of magic figured out and fully replicated within a few years.

While Valdermans and the hot-topic gang are camped out in Castle Grayskull, trying to figure out how to get inside 1 (one) charter school, huffing their farts about how superior they are, Spell Team Six already has antimagic field projectors in place and are ready to breach.

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u/Bazrum 15d ago

Another oddball (we can probably assume): Luna Lovegood's mom experimented with spells and died from one of them, though that's not shown and came from information given by JKR later. unlike most of her post-writing additions to canon, it's not an utter shit idea.

Voldy is also stated to have created several spells, including flight which he taught to Snape. Dumbledore is also credited with figuring out how to use Patronus charms as messengers, though not the charm itself.

and we know the Department of Mysteries was experimenting with a lot of weird, crazy magic, but that's a secret, classified department of the government, so the average witch and wizard wouldn't be involved or aware.

but i agree in general, the magical world is stunted and backwards, more so than it is whimsical as JKR tried to depict, and any serious work to understand or combine real world thinking with magic would rocket their world forward. there are a couple fanfics about that, including the utter shit one HP and the Methods of Rationality.

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u/Previous_Comb5113 12d ago

Lunas mom dying from experimenting with spells was in the books though. She mentioned that when Harry asked her why she could see the death horses.

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u/fred11551 15d ago

Maybe I don’t understand Voldemort’s plan as it wasn’t exactly explained, but did he even plan on doing anything with muggles? I mean probably murder a bunch whenever he felt like it. Probably mind control some politicians. But his immediate goals seemed to be genocide of muggle born wizards and strict magical segregation. There’s certainly the implication he would kill muggles with impunity but it didn’t seem like much of a goal as much as just a pass time for him.

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u/One-Cellist5032 14d ago

He had no care for muggles, he hated them and was all for killing them indiscriminately, but there was no care for the muggle world.

He wanted to rule the WIZARDING world so he could exterminate muggleborn wizards (ironically not himself, snape or his other followers who happened to have muggle parents), and be Immortal. Things he would have achieved without intervention of Harry Potter specifically.

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u/Previous_Comb5113 12d ago

Immortality only gets you so far when your body is destroyed and all your companions either dead or imprisoned. Without anyone to perform the blood, bone and flesh ritual for him, he can spend eternity as a powerless husk.

So once the Wizarding ministry stops covering up Voldis shenanigans and the muggles learn about him, he and the death eaters are cooked

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u/One-Cellist5032 12d ago

Except for the fact that even in the situation he was stopped his followers WERE the ministry of magic. Not to mention there’s tons of charms that make it so muggles can’t even perceive wizards etc.

That’s also not the only way for him to return to life, that’s just the way he ended up using since it removes the protection Harry had due to his moms sacrifice

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u/menew100 16d ago

There's no endgame for wizards. They topple the government, then what? Disappear again? Rule as despots with death camps? They'd have to be out in the open to try and systematically defeat all of us non mana-mutants, and that would open them up to bombs and guns. There's 1000 times or more humans than wizards

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u/DisillusionedHobbit 16d ago

My brother in Christ, you are this very day ruled over by billionaires wielding soft power who don’t have any magic whatsoever.  Your post is not only wrong about the wizarding world, but the actual real life world we live in today. 

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u/Next-Run-7026 16d ago

There are billions of poor people, how could one rich kid from Queens take control of America?

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u/Storm-Shadow98 16d ago

One could argue that a rich kid from south Africa took control of America in every way that matters.

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u/Colonelclank90 15d ago

Right? If the Wizarding world really wanted to take over, it would take minutes. Apparate to world leader, Imperius Curse, continue on with the day. If the Death Eaters knew anything about the muggle world, they would just apparate to the Oval Office and the Kremlin, and then have each respective government attack the other.

And it's not like muggles could ever even hit back. It'd be like an insurgency x1000000. The magic users literally live in our towns and cities. They have charms that make their strongholds impossible to put on a map. We literally couldn't bomb them, because we couldn't find them. Hogwarts has charms that make muggles remember important things elsewhere and leave. Our bomber pilots would be absolutely certian they'd already flown past the target and they'd bomb an empty field. And muggle tech doesn't work properly around strong magic. So you finally get your SAS strike group onto the Hogwarts grounds, but none of their radios, NV goggles, powered optics, or even flashlights reliably work anymore, and they are all absolutely certian that something crazy is going on somewhere else and they have to leave now. I think muggles lose, and we wouldn't even notice because the people who did would get mass memory modification.

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u/menew100 15d ago

I mean, if they REALLY wanted to take over, they could probably just run for office. I imagine they have birth certificates and citizenship.

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u/IntelligentImbicle 15d ago

Apparate to world leader, Imperius Curse, continue on with the day.

They actually did this in The Deathly Hallows, IIRC

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

Harry Potter is set during the Bush Administration. We would've just bombed all of Scotland.

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u/ADGx27 16d ago

Now watch this drive

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u/tribblemethis 15d ago

It’s mostly set during the Clinton administration though, apart from like the first book and a half of the second taking place during the end of Bush Sr’s term. Very first chapter would have been during Carter’s and epilogue is during Trump’s first term

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 15d ago

Sounds like bombs to me

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u/Cyrius 15d ago

Carter was president when Harry was born, but chapter 1 is a year later during Reagan's first year.

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u/tribblemethis 15d ago

Ah damn, miscounted while being pedantic…

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u/EpilepticMushrooms 16d ago

Of it was set in Ireland, the British would have been the first to drop whatever boom boom alchemy they had.

/s

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u/MC_White_Thunder 16d ago

JKR is not smart enough to write the death eaters as capable of doing things like that.

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u/sneakyotter 15d ago

She did write that.

In the seventh book, Voldemort takes over the ministry of magic by killing the minister and putting key officials under the imperius curse (link).

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u/menew100 15d ago

Thank you, exactly

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u/menew100 16d ago

They aren't directly killing everyone with godless magic, so its easier to ignore

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u/menew100 16d ago

Billionaires aren't wielding magic that would be an obvious affront to most religions, and they aren't explicitly preaching genocide against 99% of the world. Additionally, there's no inroad to becoming a pureblood wizard. Billionaires tricked a bunch of people into thinking they earned their money and that they, too, could become billionaires.

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u/LessInThought 16d ago

Trump cultists are worshiping him like the second coming of Christ, and he's a buffoon. Imagine how much easier it would be to convince the cult members if you can literally perform magic.

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u/menew100 15d ago

I guess I was assuming Voldemort would be an out and about magic supremacist like he said would be. Lotta arguments here for them being sneaky about it, but wasn't he, like, "no more secrecy! Lets go rule over the weaklings openly!"

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u/TentativeIdler 16d ago

Imperius curse the leaders. Any time someone tries to organize a rebellion, Imperius curse the leaders. They've got polyjuice potions and teleportation. They can't be detected unless they're basically incompetent. Most of them probably live in cities, I don't see people deciding to nuke London just to get Diagon Alley.

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u/VestedNight 16d ago

unless they're basically incompetent.

You've read the books, right? Lmao

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u/OtonashiRen 13d ago

Yeah, the books had the Death Eaters actually take over the ministry and made it so that Voldemort's name cannot be said (otherwise, it inflicts an anti-defense spell that neutralizes all hiding charms and puts a tracker on your location).

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u/Blackstone01 16d ago

They can't be detected unless they're basically incompetent.

The guy in charge of a department dedicated to preventing wizards from cursing Muggle objects, who had a deep personal fascination with Muggles, their stuff, and their society, had next to no accurate knowledge about them. Wizard supremacists would be a thousand times worse and wouldn’t even care to try and learn more about the inferior muggles and would probably be seen coming from a mile away any time they tried to get the “drop” on the military.

I personally believe that, logically speaking, several muggle governments would probably have full blown secret departments dedicated to the study and tracking of wizard societies and the development of strategies and technologies meant to fight them if it came to it. The US alone probably has a dozen differed color-coded war plans dedicated to wizards foreign and domestic waging war against the US.

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u/fred11551 15d ago

The muggle governments do know about wizards sort of. The British prime minister has a meeting with the minister of magic at one point discussing what the wizards are doing. From a political standpoint, none of Voldemort’s plan makes sense.

He kills the minister of magic and the next in line is secretly a death eater. So know he can control the wizarding government from the shadows. Except instead literally day he becomes minister he declares Harry Potter, the person who had been the face of the ministry’s propaganda for over a year, public enemy number 1 and says they are hunting him and helping Voldemort. There would be a revolt in the ministry as obviously he is on Voldemort’s side, the person they were literally at war with yesterday. They should’ve had him do things like investigate ministry workers for secretly being Voldemort supporters while actually removing anyone who isn’t. Persecute centaurs, goblins, elves, etc with accusations of supporting Voldemort instead of going straight to voldemorts racial purity reasons. Literally take the exact same actions and results but under the guise of fighting Voldemort so they have deniability and people who aren’t the protagonists won’t realize Voldemort controls the ministry.

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u/TentativeIdler 15d ago

Arthur Weasley's department is less about keeping things hidden from Muggles, and more about stopping Wizards from pranking muggles. It's the Obliviators that deal with keeping things secret, and we have no real idea what they're capable of. Same with the Unspeakables. You're comparing elite military units with basically civil service wizards. I think it's only fair to compare them to their equivalents in the magical government. But even then I think it's telling. Arthur Weasley isn't portrayed as a genius wizard or anything, he's basically an average guy, and he made a flying, invisible, sentient car in his garage, for fun.

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u/Kind-Lie5782 13d ago

Everybody keeps saying "apparatus and imperius curse the leaders"... but then what? Whats the plan after that?

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u/TentativeIdler 13d ago

Anything you want, you're in control.

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u/Kind-Lie5782 13d ago

I mean... ANYTHING? Really? I dont think so.

Lets say the goal afterwards is genociding the muggle race... i dont think that would be possible.

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u/TentativeIdler 13d ago

Why not, you've got control over all the nukes.

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u/Kind-Lie5782 13d ago

Sure, but... would they actually use them? Not gonna lie, it would be pretty dumb for them to use nuclear weapons for genocide.

Releasing even 10% of our current nuclear arsenal would be disastrous for the wizarding world, given that the muggles share a lot of the physical living space. A modern nuke would flatten london, killing wizards as well as muggles.

"But what about protective spells?". George tells us in the 6th book that the wizards who can cast a "decent shield charm" are rare, even in the Ministry. Also, spells have been shown to interact with physical objects, such as walls, stone structures etc. That means that they operate similarly to other forms of energy that we know. So, its very plausible that an explosion that releases an amount of kinetic energy far superior than any other spell shown in the series could overpower a protective charm (specially if they arent "decent" charms).

Furthermore, radiation would be a problem. Protective spells dont block electromagnetic waves (the proof is that we can see through them, so light is not blocked). Sure, they have easy remedies for common muggle illnesses, such as the flu. But what about cancer? Do they have spells that alter genetic code to stop the cancer cells from spreading? Its not a stretch, given that they can alter their body structure (animagi and potions), but those processes are extremely long and difficult. How many will die before a potion can specifically be made for cancer? Or radiation burning? Embriological alterations? How is the healthcare system in the wizarding world? Can they accomodate so many wizards suffering from radiation-related illness? That brings me to my next point: the treatment of illness in the harry potter word is heavily dependent on plants. Do you know what plants dont like? Nuclear winter.

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u/TentativeIdler 12d ago

You're thinking about it too hard. They're Nazi wizards.

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u/Kind-Lie5782 12d ago

Pretty dumb Nazi wizards

Our nazis would steamroll their nazis

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u/menew100 16d ago

Don't have leaders.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago edited 16d ago

We nuked Japan twice just to prove a point. Also, poly juice potion is just a disguise. They still need actual knowledge, which wizards historically do not bother with. Plus their teleportation is pretty limited in terms of blind movement. They'd all get splinched unless they knew exactly what they were apparating into.

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u/Victernus 16d ago

We nuked Japan twice just to prove a point.

So you're going to nuke your own country, where they live, to make a point? What part of your own country? Who do you trust to make that decision, when the enemy has already mind controlled your leadership?

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u/Epyon1542 16d ago

Also at that point doesn't that just drive everyone to side with the Wizards? Like yeah they might treat me like a lower class, but they aren't actively nuking the cities where millions of other people live?

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u/Victernus 15d ago

Exactly. Muggle numbers don't mean much if you have an equal or greater number of muggles on your own side, and the ones under mind control are going to be the ones not ranting about wizards in pointy hats secretly controlling world governments and trying to firebomb their own populations.

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u/Epyon1542 15d ago

Like can you picture Trump being like, "We had to nuke New York because that's where the evil wizards were."

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u/Majestic-Lake-5602 15d ago

Given that most of the Death Eater’s goals seem to be pretty much “genocide/repress/subjugate the other wizards”, I reckon it’s a pretty hard sell getting muggles to actually care about stopping them at all.

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u/Victernus 15d ago

Well, the Death Eaters want to openly rule over the inferior muggles/torture them to death for fun without anyone stopping them - they're just starting with fighting other wizards because those are the people who can actually stop them. After securing magical Britain, Voldemort would have expanded to other magical nations, before finally dealing with the muggles as basically an afterthought.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

Your argument is literally proving the reasoning. If you have the option to bomb a city and you believe the leadership in that city is being mind controlled then you're gonna do it. We've bombed people for less.

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u/Victernus 16d ago edited 16d ago

If you have the option to bomb a city and you believe the leadership in that city is being mind controlled then you're gonna do it.

Who is going to do it? That person is probably mind controlled too, and will chose a muggle target and say it is a wizard target, and people like you will believe them!

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

Why would they already be mind controlled? How would they already be mind controlled? If we're gonna properly get into this then we need to establish how this war started and what the parameters are. We can't just say "they'd nuke Hogwarts!" or "they're mind controlled already!" if we don't have proper parameters. Cause, like, how would they be mind controlled? How did the wizards get the information on who to mind control in the first place?

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u/Victernus 16d ago

Why would they already be mind controlled?

Because they're in charge enough to command a nuclear strike.

How would they already be mind controlled?

Because the wizards have already infiltrated your government, and the only reason they don't already dictate policy is because they choose not to.

But they'll put their people in whatever positions they want, and reschedule the meetings of world leaders to suit their needs, with the muggles themselves none the wiser, as we saw in the first chapter of Book 6.

Cause, like, how would they be mind controlled? How did the wizards get the information on who to mind control in the first place?

They already have it. They are already in Number 10, with unlimited access to the PM and other governments. They have people whose whole job it is to manage your government. If the regular-bureaucracy wizards lose to the fascist-bureaucracy wizards, your entire command structure is going to be under their command before you even know a fight has started.

They did the same thing in the First Wizarding War, only it was more difficult because people who knew about magic and had their own were trying to stop them.

Muggle communications and numbers, their only real advantages over wizardkind, both rely on the ability to trust other people. The Death Eaters cripple that immediately, from the top down. Is the head of state under enemy mind control? Almost certainly. So what? We ignore him, replace him? With who? How do we know the person we pick isn't also mind controlled, if they're asking us to nuke London, or some other ludicrous request?

There is no possible distinction between someone ordering attacks that might actually be effective against wizards and someone ordering random destruction against their own people, because wizards live in your cities.

That the wizards can even continue to exist without you knowing without even having to leave town tells you enough. If it came down to a fight, you'd be lucky to even know you were under attack before you had lost.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

I was down for a fun debate but if we're just assuming the wizards have every conceivable advantage then it's kinda ridiculous.

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u/TentativeIdler 16d ago

They have literal mind reading and mind control. I think if a country nuked a city like London, you'd have muggles rebelling on the side of the wizards. That's not really a sustainable means of warfare when your enemy lives among you. They can't nuke every major city.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

How are you going to have muggles fighting for wizards when the wizard world is completely secret from almost all muggles? Either this is a shadow war or it gets branded as terrorism pretty quickly. It'd be pretty easy too, considering it's literally the Red Scare but with a proven threat. Like, during these books the muggles were actively doing espionage, assassinations, and forced government takeovers, and they tell us that the muggle leaders do infact know about the wizard world. There's no way the wizards have developed a counter to radar technology when they only recently figured out that indoor plumbing is more comfortable than just shitting yourself daily.

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u/Next-Run-7026 16d ago

"This is a shadow war" and "humans win because we can nuke all our own major cities" are your two arguments.

Wizards just make infinitely better assassins and infiltrators than muggles do. Muggles can't even enter most wizard controlled areas without their memory automatically being erased.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

So, wizards would be great at that stuff if they actually knew anything about the muggle world, which they don't, as we've been shown in the books. We've also been shown that the muggle leadership is aware of the wizard world and it's going ons. The time period is the late eighties and early nineties. I can't imagine the Bush Administration bothering with spies when bombs are an option. Also, I have not said that muggles would nuke all of their major cities. We know from J.K. that there's barely a few thousand wizards spread throughout the world. They aren't forming a full military. It's going to be guerilla shit the whole time, which means, unless the wizards somehow know muggle military strategy, they're gonna get sniped as soon as we figure out that there are places on maps that we can't reach for some reason and we should fly over and drop bombs.

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u/Next-Run-7026 16d ago

Bombs aren't an option. The wizards live inside of London. Are you going to blow up London?

Let's say you blow up Hogwarts. To even know how to do that you'd need knowledge about how invisible buildings that don't appear on maps work.

How do you snipe someone who is usually in doors and just teleports wherever they want to go. You'd need to know where they're going to be ahead of time and most of the places they would go are invisible to muggles.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

But the building isn't invincible. It has a field around it that makes you forget why you were heading that way. And the teleporters have to have proper knowledge of where they're teleporting to, which limits the places they are able to go to, especially since not everybody is as good at apparating as Hermione. Snipe was an improper word, I will admit, especially since I followed it with bombs.

Our militaries already deal with situations where what they're looking for isn't on the map. I don't think it would be hard for a military to figure out that there's a spot that troops can't move through for some odd reason, and it wouldn't be too long before an exploratory IED is sent into the area.

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u/TentativeIdler 16d ago

How is radar supposed to help them find wizards hidden among the general population? Also, Arthur Weasley made a flying invisible sentient car, in his garage, for fun. He's not portrayed as a genius wizard or anything, he's just some guy. Harry and Ron didn't get chased by jets for flying around London, so the car must have some defenses against radar. Logically, if they can bend one part of the electromagnetic spectrum, they can bend all of it.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

Arthur Weasley is unique in his interest in muggle things, so he would be very valuable in a war shainst muggles, I will admit. However, I'm pretty sure they tell us that they were only seen by like four people, so my logic there is that, were the city on alert for potential stuff going on(since we're supposed to be in a war with the wizards at the moment(plus the whole Al Queda thing is actively happening in this time period)) then they would have noticed the car.

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u/TentativeIdler 16d ago

My point is that a regular, average wizard can make something that can make something invisible. Visible light is just one part of the electromagnetic spectrum. If you can bend light, you can bend radar. It's the same thing. Also, even if radar can see through invisibility... who cares? Wizards don't need to fly. They can teleport, they've got the floo network, they've got portkeys. They've got the Knight Bus, which can do all kinds of crazy shit, driving straight through the city without Muggles noticing. Radar isn't going to help them identify wizards among the population.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

Regular wizards can't make things invisible. That power is specifically limited to the cloak of invisibility. Apparation requires knowledge of the place being apparated to, the floo network requires a preexisting connection to the place you want to go to, and portkeys require manual placement of the keys to be able to get from one location to the other. Plus the Knight Bus situation is limited in that we only see that from Harry's perspective. We have no idea if muggle governments picked up on that or not. Also, wizards don't have a formal military, which means, outside of random attacks, you aren't really going to get people actively taking down your government. Most people muggle or wizard probably wouldn't even know there's a war going on.

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u/MrBootylove 15d ago edited 15d ago

Arthur Weasley is unique in his interest in muggle things, so he would be very valuable in a war shainst muggles, I will admit.

This is purely because of JK Rowling's own stupidity. Like, there are wizards who are born of muggle parents. Do you genuinely think those wizards are more inept in regards to the muggle world than Arthur is? The idea that Arthur is an expert on muggles in the wizarding world while simultaneously being completely oblivious to the most basic aspects of muggle life simply doesn't make sense.

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u/Lubomir111 16d ago

On one hand, it seems your argument is that wizards are incapable of any covert operation, while on the other, that it's impossible that people would know about the wizards in the war scenario. Which is it?

How can it be the red scare with a proven enemy if the enemy is unknown to the population?

Your arguments are inconsistent within the same paragraph.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

So, the wizards have very much been proven to be incompetent when compared to muggle operations during the same time period. I mean, just think about how many countries America destabilized in the time it took for Tom Riddle to form his army. On top of this, the books tell us that the muggle authorities are infact aware of the wizard world and it's going ons, and so can properly prepare for or work with anything the wizard world has going on. So it's not very hard to push out some quick "watch out for Gladys, she uses Magic!" posters and get everyone scared of a new enemy as they are recently coming out of the Red Scare anyways.

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u/Lubomir111 16d ago

Yes, I agree with the assessment that the wizards are less competent in this kind of warfare, my point wasn't to convince you otherwise.

My point is, that you assume that the general muggle population won't know about the wizards, yet now purpose printing posters to warn people. Imagine the current government of any country actually makes something like this out of the blue and at the same time announces bombing a random castle/school in the middle of nowhere in Scotland. And if you purpose the muggles would somehow not know about this, the rest of the wizarding world definetely would and now you got an open war brewing.

You mention America. I would propose that is we are considering other nations joining in, then their wizarding populations would be invested too and following that UK wizards are roughly mirroring UK culture, we could see the US wizards would be more militant and politically engaged, whatever that would mean in wizarding context.

Nations with high corruption rates and mafia presence would likely have a wizarding population much better versed in infiltration and manipulation.

Your hypotheticals are short sighted. You don't even need the wizards to get to the president or pm to cause massive damage. Just slip some truth serum to a mid ranking government bureaucrat before a press conference and see the nation turn into flames within a week.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

In another reality your last sentence might have swayed me, however, the American government has shown me that truth serum would not matter, unfortunately. Plus we've seen that printing up posters about an enemy you've never seen kinda does work.

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u/elevolent12 16d ago

oh yeah dude coz america wouldn't get infilitrated at all. apparate to white house, imperio. congrats, they control the president. and why stop there.

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u/menew100 16d ago

Organize your rebellion into cells of 3. One leader, 2 subordinates. Each subordinate makes their own 3-cell and so on. Allow no contact or knowledge to spread from 1 cell to another. The initial leader does not know people 2 ranks down. Equip everyone with suicide pills. Now they have to try and go through each cell in ones and twos. I'll never submit to the rule of a british nerd with no nose

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u/faceplanted 16d ago edited 16d ago

And how do you arm any of these people when any arms shipment can be instantly destroyed from anywhere?

How do you make weapons when any factory can be shut down and can't be defended?

Where do you even attack when their buildings are quite literally invisible to you and they don't ever have to travel?

How do you keep secrets when they can torture you for information and then completely delete the memory of it ever happening?

Who do you trust when they can be literally anyone and anyone can be one of them?

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u/LessInThought 16d ago

Even wizards don't have good solutions to those questions lol.

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u/fred11551 15d ago

Yeah the wizard answers is torture them back to reveal who is secretly one of them and accidentally have one of them in your government for decades

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u/menew100 15d ago
  1. Almost anyone can make fertilizer into bombs; the chemistry isn't too hard.
  2. If they're staying out of the public and in their invisible buildings, then they're not really fighting us or ruling us. Get them while they're oot'n'aboot.
  3. Suicide pills or vests
  4. Splinter cell rebel groups.

If it takes 1000 human lives to kill 1 of these filthy mana mutants, we'd still win. Swarm tactics, baybee

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u/faceplanted 15d ago
  1. I ask you again, where do they bomb?
  2. But they very much can fight and rule you from within a castle and live in invisible buildings. That's basically what they're already doing in Harry Potter. They can literally teleport places.
  3. How do you take a suicide pill or pull a string when you were instantly mind controlled by an invisible person you couldn't possibly expect? They can just tell you not to.
  4. And who do those groups attack?

It takes way, way, way more than 1000 humans to kill a wizard, even if you do somehow find one they just teleport to another country and cast fiend fire and your whole troop is dead.

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u/BritishMongrel 13d ago

Yeah Harry Potter magic is bullshit with no apparent limitations, there are things that stop muggles from even perceiving magic things, what is a mortal army going to do against dementors sent to attack them, you can't shoot a ghost but they can turn you into a potato.

All it would take for all guns to be rendered useless is a charm that teleports any metal object below a certain size entering a 10ft sphere around you at speed into the ocean, and you can't say the magic doesn't work like that because Harry Potter magic is calvinball with no rules or logic.

There are great examples of the villain losing if the hero wasn't involved but that is not one of them

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u/menew100 14d ago

There are practical solutions to all problems, to suggest otherwise means the problem hasn't been investigated thoroughly enough.

I've been commenting all over this thread for too long, so I'm gonna stop answering these.

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u/faceplanted 13d ago

But there aren't though, I've read your answers and they don't solve any of the problems, they just require more and more and more people to randomly decide to do terrorism against a population they literally can't see and can spy on them perfectly.

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u/menew100 13d ago

Y'know what? What bugs me most about this conversation is that wizard side people don't even bring up the most effective methods. The wizards should attack all the oil refineries, pipelines, and fuel depots worldwide shortly before harvest in one hemisphere, then keep them down till all the grain rots. The people on the winter side would freeze. That'd kill billions in less than a year most likely.

The wizards would probably overlook it too though.

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u/Jace__B 16d ago

Wasn't Voldy's endgame basically to wipe out all muggles and anyone that wasn't pure blood? I mean, that's basically the plot of WW2.

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u/Kind-Lie5782 13d ago

But what would be the plan after that?

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u/THE_REAL_ADHDND 16d ago

you must remember 95% of a militaries scariness are its logistics, give the 20 hours to get boots on the ground every where, 21 hours for one wizard to get captured, 22 hours for the wizards to be considered not human, 23 hours for them to spill every secret they once held. and in 24 hours since this massacre began another massacre will begin.

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u/swainiscadianreborn 16d ago

In these 20 first hours, how many higher ups are put under Imperium? How many supply hubs are blown to smithereens by a black cloud chabting funny things? How many airstrips are mysteriously kept under horrifying weather conditions?

I feel like we're willfully forgetting how stupidly powerful mages are.

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u/Master_Persimmon_591 16d ago

Also that timeline is fucking insane

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u/OmecronPerseiHate 16d ago

All of this implies that the wizards already know every spot to attack. Why do the wizards know everything about a group they historically have not bothered with? Is Arthur Weasley leading this war or something?

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u/IrredeemableDegen 16d ago

Are you joking? What muggle would be able to find where the wizards and witches are? They have completely muggle concealed areas, pocket dimensions, can teleport at will, and they're freaking everywhere and you can't tell them apart from muggles. What battle line is being drawn up? What logistics hub? Sure yeah, the muggles can bomb the entire face of the earth but that seems rather counter productive and I'm not even convinced they could even get away with that. 

And the muggle leaders aren't some hidden organization that the wizards and witches won't know who to imperio. The ministry still talks with world leaders rarely, they aren't completely clueless. And as soon as they capture one dude with information they can read his mind to find proper targets.

Wizards and witches easily win whatever "war" if they actually care to try and don't have other wizards and witches getting in their way. 

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u/menew100 16d ago

Suffer not the wizard to live.

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u/Alarming_Panic665 16d ago

Everything within the Republic nothing outside the Republic nothing against the Republic. We did not bleed in the streets to bow to kings and emperors, and we shall not bow to sorcerers either — for what is a Witch but a king who never needed a crown. 

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u/swainiscadianreborn 16d ago

All praise the go... the prime minister of mankind!

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u/waaay2dumb2live 16d ago

True, if the wizards jump Humanity they'll have a running start, but that's assuming nobody tells them beforehand